Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I was wandering the Interwebs searching for some sort of inspiration, and I came across a website with a rich collection of quotes from Antoine de Saint_Exupery. As I read down through the list, it seemed to me that some of the quotes spoke directly to the nature heart of submission, while others seemed to give voice to a Dominant view of the world. So, I took them and placed them in their “appropriate” category, according to my lights. You might disagree, but I imagine that sitting with these morsels might give readers here something to contemplate – I know that it worked that way for me.


swan

Dominant Quotes

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says "I was beaten," he does not say "My men were beaten".

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

Submissive Quotes

A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.

A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. And if you go to draw at the true fountainhead, the more water you draw, the more abundant is its flow.

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.